Chapter 17
***
It was a languid afternoon. Khaled Karnus sat slumped in his chair, staring impassively at the garden as the sun began to set.
The fountain, which gushed water day and night as the social gatherings began, was still working hard today. He remembered his mother's pride in installing a fancy fountain and let out a small chuckle.
A lit cigar blew out white smoke, and it was then that Khaled remembered the girl. She had appeared in the darkness of the woods, disheveled and disoriented. Upon closer inspection, she looked more like a beggar than a ghost.
The breeze carried the girl's musty odor with it. As the illegitimate son of a prominent nobleman, he'd been through a lot in his life, picking and choosing things that others would never experience.
Life at the mansion, where he was handed over like a piece of luggage after his mother's death, was horrible, and he was forced out after less than three years.
"It's poison for Peterson, too!”
The Duchess said he had a mental illness. Well, he had something like it. One day he started wandering around in the middle of the night, and when he woke up, he was gorging himself on food he hadn't eaten during the day, or scratching at his forearm with a knife that the butler had barely scrubbed clean.
The Duchess cried out that he would be a bad influence on her biological son, his half-brother, Peterson. After a few days of persuasion, the Duke of Karnus sent Khaled back to the estate. It was a so-called convalescence, but it was really an exile.
And his age, seventeen. An urgent summons arrived from the duke who had sent him away, for reasons unknown. On the way back, the ship ran into trouble near the island of Crysis. Khalad climbed into the nearby forest and pondered why. Why would his great family, the one that kicked him out, would want to see him again?
If it was to find someone to take out their anger on, he thought, he might as well die on the spot, for to him, life could end at any moment, and with a little motivation, it could end tomorrow. Life was not worth living.
"Help me. Please.”
The girl begged for help. Her hands, covered in blood and dirt, were dripping, begging for help. The shouting behind her reminded him of his life. What was she going to do with her life?
As he stared into those green eyes, thinking about it, she began to cry. The transparent tears quickly rolled down her thin cheeks. Her feet, which were as dirty as her hands, shook helplessly. He had seen this scene many times before.
In the girl's tattered dress, he saw his younger self. Seventeen-year-old Khaled saw himself in the girl, and in that moment, when he was cornered every night and forced to endure harsh beatings, he grabbed her hand and ran.
As he watched her cower in the ragged sack, he thought of butterflies. The crouching, flailing red hair reminded him of a butterfly with red wings, and when he reached the harbor and released her, he felt like he was releasing a butterfly with broken wings.
He saw the girl running away, looking like a butterfly, staggering and flying, dying before long. Then she emerged as a woman.
“Tell me. You won't tell. You won't say anything.......”
He could still see her sobbing face. Her pale face was terrified, and her sparkling eyes were filled with a steady stream of clear tears. It was a ridiculous situation.
He couldn't believe the runaway slave had become the woman the Ravant family was sponsoring, though he sometimes thought of the girl running for her life. As he watched the girl's back as she ran, her feet covered in blood, he knew she would soon starve to death.
She would have preferred to starve to death than sell her body for a living if she had the chance to ask the first person she saw to take her in. But she survived. Instead of dying soon after with broken wings, she appeared before him with more colorful wings.
Wings that could break at any moment, wings as beautiful as they were dangerous. When he opened his closed eyes, the cigar was long gone.
A hand that had been still moved gently to grasp the golden cutter. With one swift motion, he sliced off the end of the thick cigar and bit his lip. The woman's face faded into obscurity as the red sun disappeared behind the dense forest, leaving only a violet sky.
* * *
The Duke and Duchess of Karnus did not return home until late at night. As they entered the mansion, they ordered a simple meal to be prepared, as if the food at the banquet had been terrible.
"Young Master. The Master asks you to come down to the formal dining room."
Butler Hardy stood at the door to the study and made his request politely. But when he was met with silence from within, he let out an irritated sigh and raised his hand to knock again. At that moment, the door swung open.
Khaled emerged, his face impassive, accompanied by the rich, thick odor of cigars. His icy gaze locked on the butler's face as he stood stiffly at attention.
“The lord and lady have returned home, and seek your company for the late evening."
He quickly changed his demeanor and bowed. Khaled glared at his polite posture, then turned away and headed for the dining room, where the duke and duchess were whispering in conversation, wearing the arrogant expressions characteristic of nobility. Khaled bowed lightly and took his seat.
"Did the work go well?"
Charles, Duke of Karnus, asked. He was blaming his son for daring to run off in the middle of a royal event, claiming his work was more important.
"Yes, sir. Thanks to the consideration of His Majesty and my father, I finished without delay."
"What do you mean you finished without delay?"
"The Blackstone's Troupe will move in as soon as the work on Cannon Hall is finished, which will be this October at the earliest."
Charles nodded, but he was actually quite surprised. When he'd given him Lavonne, it had been little more than an unremarkable estate. His son had developed it into a commercial center.
He cleared the land and buildings began to be built. Things progressed at an unbelievable rate, and he didn't borrow a dime from his father for the enormous expense.
By then, Charles realized that his son had attracted quite a few deep-pocketed investors with his brilliant business plan. The fact that his illegitimate son, who was technically a member of the aristocracy, had gotten his money by his brilliant mind.
He stayed in Lavonne until he was seventeen, and by the time he was twenty-two, Lavonne had become a city with a commercial center that rivaled the capital. Instead of traveling across the sea to buy goods from other countries, the nobility traveled to Lavonne.
All the brands that Khaled had brought under his banner were there, culminating in Cannon Hall. Charles remembered the last time he'd seen it.
It was a large, domed structure perched over the river in a reddish sunset. A beautiful, elegant structure that had caught the attention of passersby even though it wasn't finished yet.
Add to that a deal with the famously snooty Blackstone's Troupe, and it was only a matter of time before it became the biggest theater in the land. Charles could already see the aristocracy flocking to the theater like ants to an ant colony.
He smirked, then glanced at Khaled. Who would have thought that his son, who had been scorned for his bastardy, would stand so prominently among his peers. His eyes were not mistaken, he was proud to say.
A capable, powerful bastard was more worthy of being Duke of Karnus than a weakling who might die at any moment. Bringing back the child he'd cast aside was, to say the least, a triumph of a lifetime.
"Now that you're home, you can get some rest."
Duchess of Karnus, Laura said, as if she felt sorry for such a son. At the sound of her kindly voice, Khaled gave a low chuckle.
"I'm flattered that my mother is so concerned about me; it really does feel like coming home."
Everyone in the room knew there were thorns in his words, even her. A prominent vein stood at Laura's temple. The sound of that sonless monster's sneering voice sent a shiver down her spine.
"Still, you should take care of yourself and get back to work. Your brother will be back soon."
Laura said something like this every time her judgment twisted. The convalescent Peterson would be back soon. The eldest son of the house, the soon-to-be Duke of Karnus, she desperately believed.
"Yes, I do, and the sooner he returns, the sooner I won't have to come here."
"......."
"I have one body and two roles, so I'm going to try my best."
With that, Khaled gracefully sliced the thick steak in front of him. Laura changed the subject, washing down the soaring minutes with wine.
"I heard you had an unexpected visitor."
Laura glanced at Khaled as she spoke, but he simply picked up his cutlery again and continued eating.
"Visitor?"
Charles asked, narrowing his eyes. He didn't understand what she meant by "visitor", the day of the Royal Academy's exhibition. Everyone who could be called a guest was there.
"Who ......."
"Miss Aubrey Sandalwood was here."
Khaled interrupted Laura, his expression unchanged. Charles's gaze shifted to his son, then back to Laura.
"You mean the young lady sponsored by the Ravants?"
"Yes, that's right. She was so untainted, so innocent, she was like a child."
Laura chided Aubrey, her voice soft and graceful. She told them about the tea party and how she stepped on Patrick Paddingham's foot at her first party. Charles chuckled at Aubrey's ridiculous behavior.
"I don't understand the Count of Ravant," he said, "what was he thinking, sending her out into a high society."
"The reason is obvious. She needs to be married so she can leave home. I hear she has no property left by her dead parents, and her stay at the Count of Ravant's is a golden opportunity."
Shaking his head, Charles looked to Khaled to see if he remembered his earlier words.
"By the way, what brought the young lady here?"
"That's what I'm worried about now, I wonder if she is infatuated with Khaled."
Laura, seeing an opening, quickly interjected. Charles's face scrunched up as he looked at her, the tips of his eyebrows drawn together.
"Is she?"
"What a sweet gentleman Khaled was on the spot."
"If she was chasing him home for being a little nice, what the hell......."
Khaled found the situation hilarious. Aubrey Sandalwood wasn't the kind of woman who followed him for being a little nice.
***
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Write a comment
Nona (Sunday, 14 January 2024 06:45)
Thank you! I catched up in one sitting